Run successful meetings Step 13 - Finish your meeting on time

Welcome to the 15 Steps for Successful Meetings. We are on step number 13, finish on time. Why should we finish on time? Well, really, there's one rule above all others that make this important. Finishing late is rude. If you finish late, there are a number of impacts for you and for the other people in the meeting. Now, if you don't finish on time, what does actually happen? What does it really mean for you? Well, first of all, you make other people late for whatever they're doing next. No one's going to thank you for making them late. You damage your reputation. If you can't finish on time, people begin to think that you can't finish on time. And is that a reputation you want to have at work? You're stealing time from participants. Now, that may seem like a strong word, but that's actually what you're doing. When you invited them to a meeting, You asked for a set period of time and they agreed to give it to you and to the group. If you finish late, you're taking time that they didn't agree to give you, and that's stealing time from the rest of their day. It demonstrates that you have poor time management skills. If you can't run a 30, 60, 90-minute meeting on time, how are you going to be trusted to run other bigger projects and programs on time? Is it a demonstration that you're always going to be late? It ties into damaging your reputation. You're also going to annoy people, and making people late causes stress. It can cause stress for you a small amount in the meeting. Oh, I've got to get to the end. Oh no, now I'm late and I'm worried about it. That can cause internal anxiety, and everyone in the meeting may get anxiety about being late for other things or having less time to do what they needed to do after your meeting ended. So there's this and one more. There's one other big thing that happens if you don't finish your meetings on time. You can no longer complain about other people's meetings starting late. If you're sat in a meeting and it starts late, you're going, oh, why can't people turn up on time? You can never complain about other people's meetings starting late, and you can't really complain about people not attending your meetings on time, because if your actions mean people are late for other things, then why shouldn't someone else's actions allow people to be late for yours? No more complaining if you don't finish your meetings on time. And we love to complain, so give yourself that opportunity to complain by finishing yours on time. But how do you do it? How do you finish a meeting on time? Well, you follow steps 7 to 10 plus 12. Now, step 11 in this process was just repeating the earlier steps if you have multiple topics. So that still holds true, but steps 7 through 10 and 12 will allow you to finish and will help you finish on time. And here's what they are. Stay focused on the output. If you're focused on the output through the meeting, you're more likely to finish on time. Measure the progress towards it. You may or may not complete the output in your meeting, but at least halfway through and three-quarters of the way through, you'll know whether you're going to be successful, so you can Adapt the meeting to stay on track or adapt to finish and set up a next step to complete the output if it wasn't done in the time that you expected. And if you give time updates throughout the meeting, everybody is aware— yourself and all the participants in the meeting— they're all aware of the progress towards the end. Nobody is surprised when there's only 5 minutes left. And the reason that's good? is you need to have a 5-minute wrap-up. If you plan for that 5-minute wrap-up, measure the progress, stay focused, give time updates, you can have a 5-minute wrap-up at the end, and that allows you to finish on time. So this is how you do it. This is how you can stay on track and how you can finish your meetings on time. And that is step number 13 in the process. Make sure, please make sure, you're finishing your meetings on time.